Geysers, fumeroles and volcanoes

Ouberos · May 7, 2017

I must be doing something wrong. Perhaps you could advise.

I've been searching for volcanic activity for many hours now, not found anything. I've looked at the guides and replicated where I can but found nothing. Could anyone correct me if I'm doing it wrong?

Located a planet Eddiscovery lists as having "major silicate vapor geysers" in my case this is Njikas D2 and it's moon D3.

Then I circle the planet in SC looking for likely ravines. Drop down to about 4 or 5 km and set scanner to max distance then cruise about looking for POI. When I find them I drop into them and slowly trawl about until I spot the inevitable Drones and cargo. Occasionally I deploy my fighter and blast them to pieces to help vent my frustration.

Then I return to 4-5 km and repeat.

So far I've blasted at least two dozen drones but seen zero volcanism.

Any tips? Should I abandon world and look for a different type of volcano or is silicate vapor as good as any other?

Thank you in advance,

Galactic Fork · May 7, 2017

Ouberos said:
I must be doing something wrong. Perhaps you could advise.

I've been searching for volcanic activity for many hours now, not found anything. I've looked at the guides and replicated where I can but found nothing. Could anyone correct me if I'm doing it wrong?

Located a planet Eddiscovery lists as having "major silicate vapor geysers" in my case this is Njikas D2 and it's moon D3.

Then I circle the planet in SC looking for likely ravines. Drop down to about 4 or 5 km and set scanner to max distance then cruise about looking for POI. When I find them I drop into them and slowly trawl about until I spot the inevitable Drones and cargo. Occasionally I deploy my fighter and blast them to pieces to help vent my frustration.

Then I return to 4-5 km and repeat.

So far I've blasted at least two dozen drones but seen zero volcanism.

Any tips? Should I abandon world and look for a different type of volcano or is silicate vapor as good as any other?

Thank you in advance,

1) Choose small moons. Only a small number of trenches will have them (if it has any sites at all), even on an active planet. Planets are huge, so it's like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of north america.
2) From what others have said (I've only found one site, so I'm using second hand information), POIs only appear if there is a resource on the volcanic body. And it's not even a regular giant POI, it's a tiny pin POI, and even those will sometimes just turn out to be prospecting rocks.
3) Best bet (at least from what I've read) is to ignore the radar and look for the plumes the bodies put out. And hope for luck. Searching is going to be time consuming.
4) If you just want to see them, rather than find them, you can go to the thread and look at the spreadsheet of discovered volcanic sites, then just travel to the coordinates.

[VR] optimal_909 · May 7, 2017

If you are familiar with the guides, I guess you are aware that you have to go for the really small bodies, preferably 3-400 km in radius.

As for finding stuff, I always relied on 'eyeball mk1' - cruise at an altitude of 2km abd watch out for plumes. The way terrain generation works means beyond drawing distance the plumes are usually emitted at higher altitude, so you'll see the smoking gun. And of course, after the first site you'll know much better what to look for and won't be fooled by terrain features.

Edit: ninja'd

varonica · May 7, 2017

Ouberos said:
I must be doing something wrong. Perhaps you could advise.

I've been searching for volcanic activity for many hours now, not found anything. I've looked at the guides and replicated where I can but found nothing. Could anyone correct me if I'm doing it wrong?

Located a planet Eddiscovery lists as having "major silicate vapor geysers" in my case this is Njikas D2 and it's moon D3.

Then I circle the planet in SC looking for likely ravines. Drop down to about 4 or 5 km and set scanner to max distance then cruise about looking for POI. When I find them I drop into them and slowly trawl about until I spot the inevitable Drones and cargo. Occasionally I deploy my fighter and blast them to pieces to help vent my frustration.

Then I return to 4-5 km and repeat.

So far I've blasted at least two dozen drones but seen zero volcanism.

Any tips? Should I abandon world and look for a different type of volcano or is silicate vapor as good as any other?

Thank you in advance,

Wrong POI's, volcanism is always, and I mean always, a very small point like POI. Large POI's, POI's that shrink, medium sized POI's and medium sized POI's that shrink are never volcanism, ignore those. Also since the POI associated with volcanism is always a fixed POI (for the minerals), you can see them during glide mode, so don't hesitate to glide long distances whenever you can, with a little bit of practice you can cover way more territory in glide mode than any other way.

The bodies are a little bit large for a beginner, until you get a bit of practice picking out likely spots try sticking to bodies 500km in radius or smaller, around 300km is ideal to start out with. Good luck.

Ouberos · May 7, 2017

Thank you for the speedy response.

Are they always in canyons or is it likely there may be some in the plains?

CMDR MadRaptor · May 8, 2017

Ouberos said:
Thank you for the speedy response.

Are they always in canyons or is it likely there may be some in the plains?

They can in fact be anywhere on the planet at the moment, though the easiest and most likely places have been canyons. Mainly we choose canyons because on bodies besides icy there are usually very real standout canyons so search time is cut down. And the smaller the planet the better the chance that that stand out canyon will have volcanism.

Like the others have said, it's the tiny, tiny blue POI's that you should be looking for, again like others said, I actually go for the plumes rather than the poi, unless of course I"m doing the SC method in which case you are looking for the tiny pin POI's. Thanks to Varonica I now do not need to worry about missing something under the shrinking poi's.

Also to agree with the others, small planets are best to star, 300KM below, then move from there. I mainly stick to 800, highest is usually 1,000, however my next expedition i can't be picky so hopefully i'll learn some new tricks for those bigger planets.

Keep it up, sometimes it's long tireless fruitless hours of searching but sometimes, for me it's almost always, the find is worth the time.

varonica · May 8, 2017

Ouberos said:
Thank you for the speedy response.

Are they always in canyons or is it likely there may be some in the plains?

I have found them twice on a plain, twice maybe three times in a crater, though admittedly they were craters that were either broken up or had a canyon running through, but never in a crater in good condition or on a mountain or rise of any sort. The problem with featureless plains is just that, they are featureless plains, you have really no way to tell if you have already searched the bit you are flying over. Canyons though, yes you can easily pick out the ones you haven't searched, until we get better mapping tools the canyons are the way to go.

CMDR MadRaptor · May 12, 2017

Since this a volcanism thread I figured I'd come here to promote this one: I've put some questions in regards to volcanism. Come by and add your own: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/351693-FDev-Questions-regarding-Volcanism-and-Organics

Dweezil_Moon · May 12, 2017

if you don't care about finding new ones, just check the passenger missions. Many of the tourists just want to see fumeroles or geysers, and will tell you exactly where to go.

CMDR MadRaptor · May 12, 2017

Dweezil_Moon said:
if you don't care about finding new ones, just check the passenger missions. Many of the tourists just want to see fumeroles or geysers, and will tell you exactly where to go.

Yeah, but there isn't really any joy or sense of accomplishment in finding already found sites, which coming form the creator for the thread that logs sites for CMDRS to visit sounds a bit weird. But that's because I understand some don't want to deal with the long hours of searching for their own. However, the really is no better feeling than having searched a body for hours and then seeing those white tufts of smoke on the horizon. It's makes it all worth it.